


The Sunless City

by marmaladeSkies



Series: Sunless City AU [1]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: But it’s justified in this case, Canon-Typical Racism, Claude von Riegan is a Little Shit, Dehumanization, Gen, Harm to Children, Kidnapping, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-01-30
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:41:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28487751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marmaladeSkies/pseuds/marmaladeSkies
Summary: As a child, Claude is kidnapped by Those Who Slither In The Dark. He doesn’t take it sitting down, and neither do the other children.The Agarthans don’t know what they’re up against.
Series: Sunless City AU [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2086746
Comments: 9
Kudos: 28





	1. Intake

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to the new series! Some of you may recognize segments from a certain Whumptober fic of mine...
> 
> This fic is going to be approximately 1/3rd worldbuilding, 1/3rd plot, and 1/3rd biotech rambling (exact percentages may differ). Suffice to say I have strong opinions about Solon and his lack of experimental rigor.
> 
> All beta-reading credit goes to the wonderful [Ruunkur!](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ruunkur/pseuds/Ruunkur) Thanks so much for helping this fic become a reality.

Tammisha sprawled like a satiated cat across the plains of Almyra. While it had started as a minor trade hub, what once was a small town had flourished over the centuries into one of the country’s most populous cities, second only to the capital itself. Its palace sat on top of the great river Arav, which gave water to the city, fed its farmlands, and provided ready transportation for the vast amount of goods and services that passed through the city. The palace and city both were highly decorated with elaborate murals, mosaics, and ornamental fountains (fed by the Arav of course), all devoted to the praise of past heroes of Almyra.

Khalid had become bored of it within a couple of days.

Once you saw one grand palace, you saw them all, and he wasn’t even allowed to explore the city itself. The only time he got to see any of it was from the safety of his palanquin, and even then the most of what he could see through the little window was crowds. A royal procession was a rare event, and what seemed like all of the inhabitants of the city had come out in the hope of catching a glimpse of the king with their own eyes.

He didn’t see what the big deal was. _He_ saw his father most days. The province’s satrap, Khalid’s aunt, had seen him a lot when they were still children in Isbanir. Surely seeing him now wasn’t that unusual? And yeah, the common folk wouldn’t have seen him at all, but... wasn’t that normal? Certainly not something worth making a fuss over.

Khalid’s oldest brother got to go into the city. Rashad was six years his senior and old enough to start his own household should he want to, so he guessed it made sense. But it still stung. Rashad got to go see the universities and the markets and the nobility. Khalid got to see the same rooms in the same palace with the same children who would rather pretend he didn’t exist than play. Rashad came to the palace in the evening with a multitude of tales about bickering politicians and the price of millet and the labor market where criminals waited for their sentence to start. All Khalid could talk about was reading in the library and failing to talk the satrap’s apothecary into letting him borrow some arsenic to keep his resistance up. Rashad was learning statecraft from experience. Khalid was learning it from boring lectures by his tutors.

It would have been more tolerable if he’d been able to roam at will like he did back home. Sure, he wasn’t supposed to go out alone _there_ either, but he knew all the ways to get out of the Inner Palace, and how to get back too without being caught, and he’d even become known to a few of the civilians as someone worth knowing. He was still a half-breed brat, but he was a half-breed brat whose mother worked in the palace and had all the best gossip, some of which was even useful.

But no, here he was too closely watched. Even just leaving his room meant being followed by a veritable mob of servants. There was no way he’d be able to get out of the palace without being seen, not when even drifting in the direction of the kitchen meant being intercepted and redirected. 

When his aunt’s oldest son mentioned a festival being held in honor of the king, Khalid jumped at the chance to actually have some fun for once. But unfortunately, he couldn’t go. His parents had no interest in going (matters of state took priority, which was dumb), and his cousin had no interest in babysitting a little kid, especially not when he had an event of his own to attend. Well, that was just silly. Khalid was eleven! That was very nearly twelve, which was very nearly thirteen, and that was close enough to being an adult! There was no way he didn’t belong at this festival. But his cousin said he wouldn’t take him, and wouldn’t even tell him when it was going to start.

Khalid would have just spent that night in his room, trying to set up a trap on his window in case someone tried to break in, but when he started setting out the venomstone needles he noticed that the guard that was normally stationed there was gone. He didn’t know if the guard was off at the privy or just distracted, but this wasn’t an opportunity he was going to miss! It also wasn’t an opportunity to throw away by being careless, so he made sure to change into a set of servant clothing he’d brought specifically in case he managed to slip away like this. He’d had to hide them under his riding clothes, because his mother was sharp and would ask questions if she found them, but he was glad he’d managed it.

Once he was away from his room, slipping into the city was easy. His aunt, as it turned out, didn’t have many guards roaming the grounds; she must have them on rotation within the palace instead. Even the front gate only had two guards, both of whom Khalid was able to avoid by going over to a side wall and climbing it like the little monkey his sisters liked to claim he was.

The streets of Tammisha were much more interesting than its palace. The festival stretched through every street he went down, and there were all sorts of interesting snacks to buy and activities to try. He had plenty of money on him (too much, to be honest, but he was pretty sure he was only cheated out of a large coin _once_ ), and as it turned out? The snacks were _totally worth it._ Ground liver kebabs, steamed beets, faloodeh flavored with honey and rosewater... Khalid could eat an entire second dinner just on snacks like this.

The entertainment was nothing to turn away, either. The streets rang with a cacophony of music, as it seemed like everyone even slightly capable of playing an instrument was out trying to charm coins out of passersby. Acrobats performed amazing feats of strength and flexibility in costumes decorated with tiny bells, knife-throwers speared pieces of fruit mid-air, professional fighters dueled each other and promised prizes to any challenger who could defeat them. No one would take Khalid’s money for bets, though, which was just as well. He was sure he’d have trouble collecting on them anyway.

After a couple of hours of wandering the streets and avoiding anyone that looked like they might be about to take an issue with him, Khalid spotted his cousin ducking into a teahouse. Curious, he quickly finished off his stuffed pepper and hurried to follow him. A teahouse seemed like an odd place to go when there were fire dancers just outside, but maybe there was something even better in there? Or maybe this was where the event his cousin had mentioned was! Sure, it was probably a boring adult party with a lot of standing around and talking and no entertainment, but it couldn’t hurt to check.

As soon as he got through the door, a pair of hands grabbed him by the shoulders. Instincts from years of being attacked by his siblings or those who supported them told Khalid to lift his foot and kick back at where, hopefully, his assailant’s knee would be. Something crunched under his boot and the grip on his shoulders loosened, but before he could twist away and run another pair of hands grabbed him, this time by the arms. A third stuffed a gag into his mouth (he tried to bite the offending hands, but only got cloth), and soon enough he was being hauled off his feet and carried.

Through all of this, his cousin and the patrons of the teahouse just sat and watched.

“So long, street rat!” someone called behind him as he was hurried through a back door and into an alley.

Khalid kicked, flailed, tried to shout around the gag, but none of it did anything but tire him out. His kidnappers certainly weren’t being slowed by any of it- if anything they went even faster. After several turns through the narrow alleyways, they came to a caravan. Khalid was unceremoniously thrown into the cage of a prison wagon holding a group of other children. A tarp was quickly thrown over the cage, obscuring its contents from any would-be onlookers. 

It took Khalid several long minutes to get the gag out- it had been tied _tight._ He didn’t talk immediately after, either, instead deciding to listen to the quiet murmurings of the wagon’s other inhabitants.

“I don’t think it’s a cleanup,” muttered a boy next to him. “Sure, I wouldn’t put it past the satrap to do this -wouldn’t want us street rats offending the delicate eyes of the king by existing, would we?- but I’m pretty sure I saw an actual local in another wagon.”

“You mean the apothecary’s daughter?” asked a girl as Khalid went to feel the lock on the door. Sturdy, of course, but he’d broken locks before, and it only had to be one strong enough to hold children, right? “They got a guardsman’s boy too. There are gonna be some really unhappy parents in the- hey, don’t touch that!”

The warning came far too late to stop the spells in the lock from throwing Khalid back into a cluster of children. “Ow...” he muttered to himself as he scrambled to sit up.

“Idiot!” snapped the boy. “There’s a reason none of us had popped it already!”

Something knocked against the front of the cage. “Keep it down back there!” a man called.

“Choke on a bowstring, dog!” the boy called back.

Khalid didn’t like the idea of giving himself away, not in front of some people who apparently did not like the king or likely _any_ authority, but he liked the idea of being kidnapped and taken who-knows-where even less. “My father’s the king!” he shouted. “He’ll pay well if I’m safely returned and bring the wrath of all Almyra down if I’m not!”

The bark of laughter from the front was discouraging. The same from several of the children, even more so. “You couldn’t come up with anything believable?” asked the boy. “About half of us have claimed that already!”

Of course they had. Khalid sighed, rubbing the back of his head. “It was worth a shot,” he eventually said.

“You do have the accent for it,” admitted the boy. “You a servant to one of the nobs here? But no prince would get picked up by snatchers. His guards would chop any kidnappers into tiny little pieces first.”

“What do you think they want us for?” asked a new child.

“Who knows?” answered another girl. “I can see Srengi stealing slaves instead of buying, but they usually want adults. Some mining companies hire children- small bodies for small tunnels- but they’re all overseen by the crown. King wouldn’t need to steal- he could ask for volunteers and get a thousand brown-nosing sycophants offering up their kids to be worked to death.”

“Morfis, I bet,” said the first boy. “Why work your own children to death when you can steal those of the enemy instead?”

“If we’re thinking that, then why not Leicester?”

The boy laughed. “That’s a joke if I’ve ever heard one. Those cowards can’t do anything more serious than a border raid, and we’re far from the border.”

“Oh yeah? What about that time when-”

Khalid tuned out the following discussion. He didn’t need to hear about all the horrible things people thought about his mother's homeland.

They stayed in the city for just long enough for a few more children to be thrown into the wagon, and then they were taken away. They were on the road for long enough that the children eventually began to settle into an uneasy sleep; it was late at night, being kidnapped was exhausting, and no one would be able to escape if they were tired. Khalid couldn’t, though. Falling asleep surrounded by strangers was something that he had been trained out of long ago, not that had he ever been comfortable with the notion to begin with. Assassination attempts did that to a person.

Light had begun to filter in around the tarp for several hours before the wagon came to a halt. Almost immediately, their kidnappers threw open the cage door and started pulling out children. It was all very efficient, Khalid noted as he squeezed himself into the farthest corner of the cage he could. One reached in with a shepherd’s crook and hooked a child close enough for another to grab, and a third clapped them in manacles and an iron collar. Chains ran between the manacles, short ones that kept their hands together behind their back and long ones that reached up to the collar, then back to connect to the collar of the child behind them, so that once everyone was out of the wagon they were in one long line.

They were led to a ruin. It had once been a watchtower, from what Khalid could tell, but it had clearly been abandoned for many years. Maybe even many hundreds of years; he didn’t have the experience to tell. It certainly wasn’t a good place to keep stolen slaves- the stone bricks of the few remaining walls looked like they were about to disintegrate into dust at any moment.

The group from the wagon in front of his was marched into the ruin. After just a few moments, their captors came back alone. The same happened with the group from another wagon. And then a third. By the time it was Khalid’s turn, his mind had already come up with half a dozen scenarios for what could be happening in there, each more hideous than the next.

Instead, they were simply led to an upraised panel on the floor, decorated in red and orange with a strange symbol that glowed when they stepped on it. Their captors pushed them into the center of the panel, then hurried to get off of it. Khalid tried to follow, but was stopped by his chains and the weight of the children in the rest of his group.

After a moment, the air shifted around them and then they were somewhere else. Somewhere underground -Khalid could see roots coming down from the ceiling- but other than that there was no way to know. He’d been teleported places before and he knew that a single mage could only take someone so far away, but he didn’t have a clue how that would change if it was some odd device casting the spell instead. How did it work, anyway? Did it somehow store Warp spells?

(He knew it didn’t really matter, but it gave him something to think about other than the no-doubt horrible fate in store for them.)

His group was taken away from the panel by a fresh group of people. Their original captors had presumably stayed behind to bring one of the other batches of children in; as they were led further downhill by these new captors, he could hear the sound of the panel activating. They walked for long enough that the other children in Khalid’s group started to get brave enough to complain about it. None of the complaints got a response from the men leading them down the tunnel, not even a curse or a demand to be quiet.

Khalid didn’t know how long they had been walking before they arrived at a cavern, dimly lit by lanterns up on the ceiling. It was full of people, all of whom were busy loading things (he couldn’t tell what, exactly, just that it was sacks of _something_ ) into crates, loading crates onto carts, and loading carts onto a massive wagon attached to a metal rail that extended into a tunnel on the other side of the cavern.

“This is too big an operation for just kids,” muttered a girl to Khalid’s right. “I wonder what else they’re smuggling?”

“Can’t be anything too expensive or the nobs would be fussing over it,” a boy answered. “Unless they’re taking from all over the country, I guess. How many of those panels could they have?”

“It has to be opium,” another girl said firmly. “My Da’s a trader, and I’ve heard him complain about export restrictions before. There’s always demand for it, and never enough supply.”

“This much, though? That can’t be all it is. What else is cheaper smuggled than imported? Tea? Coffee?”

“Fire jelly?” Khalid suggested.

The first girl stilled. “I sure hope not. Won’t that stuff go up if someone looks at it funny? I don’t want to burn to death in a warehouse.”

It didn’t; it only caught fire on contact with water or existing fire. But Khalid didn’t know how to correct that without letting on that he was a little more important than just a servant, so he stayed quiet. 

He did not stay quiet when their new batch of captors started unchaining the children and stuffing _them_ into crates. That merited a lot of yelling and struggling and general cursing, but to no avail; the kidnappers were just too big and too many to resist. He put up a good fight though, and even managed to bloody one’s nose before she raised an odd little bottle and blasted a foul-smelling fog into his face.

Khalid woke up to darkness, his back up against something hard and unyielding. Carefully, he raised his hands to feel the area around him. Wooden panels- coarse, un-sanded- formed walls to either side and in front of him. At his back was probably more wood. A knothole to his right let in a tiny amount of light and air.

Of course. He had to be in one of the crates. With great effort, he managed to twist around to peer out of the knothole. There wasn’t much to see. More crates, mostly. A grey cat slept on top of one of them. He hadn’t had much of a chance to look at the words stamped onto them before, but now that he could get a good look at one, it became obvious that the words were in a script he’d never seen before.

That boded poorly. If they were in the Almyran script, at least that suggested he had been shipped to somewhere in Almyra. This strange one, though... at first he thought it might have been the Fodlani alphabet, but there were a few characters that didn’t match any of the ones his mother had taught him.

As he wracked his brain trying to match the script to half-remembered lessons about the lands beyond Almyra (Sreng used runes, Morfis the same script as Almyra, Duscur... actually, he’d never learned Duscur’s. Could it be theirs?), footsteps appeared. The cat woke up, glanced off to Khalid’s left, and leapt off the crate and out of sight.

“Yes, yes, we have your payment ready,” a woman’s voice was saying. “But we need to see the goods first; the clan we ordered dogs from gave us half-dead ones, if you can believe it. Go on, get these open.”

He heard the cracking of wood as presumably a crate was opened.

“Well, it’s alive. Not very healthy, though. Fifty percent for this one.”

An argument broke out between the woman and another person, a man with a borderlands dialect. The man wanted to be paid the full price for him- the woman refused. She needed healthy children; sickly ones had to be nursed back to health before they could be ‘processed.’ And wasn’t that an ominous word?

Eventually they settled on seventy percent, and then the racket of crates being opened started again, each one getting closer and closer to the box Khalid was crouched in. After fourteen more, the end of a crowbar jammed its way into the corner of the box and wrenched off its top.

Slender, long-fingered hands hauled him out and dropped him onto the ground. “I’m impressed- Not one dead so far,” said the woman’s voice. “Now, this one...” 

A hand took him by the chin and tilted his head up, giving him the perfect view of a paper-white face set with engorged veins and brilliant red eyes. _Ghoul,_ whispered the little part of his brain that had grown up on his father’s tales of spirits and demons. “Only a little bruised up, good. Let’s see here...”

The woman’s other hand clipped a strange device around his earlobe. There was a stab of pain, a sound like a chirp from the device, and then he was released. But only for the most part; something stayed attached to his ear. He reached up and felt it. A tag, of some odd material. Too stiff to be fabric, too flexible to be metal. Blood clung to his fingers as he pulled them away.

“Odd, that one’s crested,” muttered the woman as she peered at the device. “The outside lands aren’t supposed to have crests.” She turned to face the man- who, now that Khalid got a good look at him, was indeed of one of the border tribes. Was he being sold to Fodlan? “One hundred-fifty percent. Two hundred percent if you find another like it.”

She then shoved Khalid roughly in the direction of a huddled group of children his own age, all chained and tagged like him. Tantalizingly nearby was an open door. “Stay put,” she ordered, noticing his gaze. “Try to run off and you’ll end up like _him._ ” She pointed at a boy lying on the ground in a puddle of drool.

Khalid tried to run anyway. He didn’t get ten paces before the tag in his ear pulsed with magic and started draining the energy from his body, and one more before his legs collapsed under him. He was unconscious before he hit the ground.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Exile - An Agarthan who has been expelled from Shambhala, or one of their descendants. Typically meted out as a punishment for political dissidents, exile is generally considered a death sentence as the vast majority of new exiles die of exposure or starvation. A few, however, have managed to form thriving micro-societies, a few of whom make a living facilitating the shipment of raw materials and even luxury goods from the surface world to the underground city.
> 
> These are generally kept secret from the common man of Shambhala, as the idea of engaging in trade with the surface goes completely against the current dogma of the city.


	2. Acclimation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Claude gets his bearings. The Agarthans get annoyed.

The lab manager was upset, so Metis kept her head down. Altea hadn’t come across as a vindictive boss before, but it was still never never a good idea to court negative attention. Her career depended on good references and happy bosses. Sometimes that meant letting the boss in question rant about the inadequacies of exile suppliers.

Some of their subjects had arrived in poor condition. It was a risk that came with collecting animals from the wild. All that could be done was to treat the injured and sick, and hope the malnourished could be nursed back to health by the time the quarantine and acclimation period was over. Altea had known the risks when she applied for approval to do surfacer studies, and that wasn’t what she was upset about.

No, what had Altea so angry was something entirely different.

“I paid a small fortune for fifty pureblood outlanders. And you know what they gave me? Forty-nine and a half!”

“We’re still well within our margins,” said Linos. He offered her another capsule of coffee substitute.

She dropped it in her existing mug of the foul stuff and began angrily stirring it with her pen. “That’s not the point! I expect our suppliers to give us what we ask for, not to just say “oh, it’s more valuable crested!” as if that in any way fixes things!”

Iacchus, who was new and didn’t yet realize it was best to just let Altea vent, spoke up. “Isn’t one of the other labs doing crest research? Maybe we could trade it for something.”

“Oh no,” Linos muttered just quietly enough for Metis to hear.

Iacchus didn’t seem to notice the sudden silence at the table. “Solon would be interested. At least he’d-”

Altea slammed her fist down on the table. “I’m not trading it to _Solon!_ He stole my grant!”

“I’m out,” Linos whispered, standing up.

Metis grabbed him by the arm and yanked him back into his seat. No way was he leaving her to listen to this alone.

“I worked my ass off for that grant! I spent so many late nights perfecting the proposal, tailoring to appeal to the people on the committee, proofread it five times... And then Solon just waltzes up to Thales and says he needs funds for that _stupid_ rage virus of his, and then _suddenly_ the committee is all “oh, this really isn’t what we’re looking for” and hands it to him instead! Like a rage virus has anything whatsoever to do with medical research!”

“Well, you could argue that-”

“Not that it would ever work, anyway! A rage virus is a ridiculous idea in the first place! Even if he managed to get it to work- which he won’t- a rage virus that works on surfacers is likely to affect humans as well! It’s just too risky, and for what? Something that makes surfacers even _more_ bloodthirsty?”

The second time Linos stood up, he managed to slip away before Metis could grab him.

“Absolutely useless! But Solon has the ear of _Thales,_ somehow, and what Thales says is what goes. Well, let me tell you this: if Solon wants crested children to poke and prod at, he’s welcome to keep tonguing Thales’ ass until some pop out!”

Iachhus gave her a horrified look. “I’m quite sure that’s not how it works.”

What was this idiot doing? It never did any good to argue with Altea when she was on her Solon rant. If anything, it just encouraged her.

“What’s the problem anyway? So what if one of the subjects has a little local blood?”

“Local surfacers are contaminated with dragon blood,” Metis interrupted, trying to keep Altea from veering off onto her beast rant. “It sometimes shows in absurd hair and eye colors, and of course crests, but is usually present even if it’s not visible. It can interfere with medical tests, so even if our outlander was crestless, he’d still be ineligible for the study. What number is he, anyway?”

“Sixteen,” Iacchus answered. “In Room Four. I think that’s one of yours, isn’t it?”

Altea grumbled something under her breath and glared at her mug of coffee substitute, but since she didn’t launch into another rant Metis considered that a win. “It is, yes,” Metis said with a nod.

“Lucky you,” Linos said, coming back with a dented, unlabeled can. “You’ll soon have one surfacer less to deal with.” He glanced over at Iacchus. “Since Sixteen’s tainted, we’ll have to either sac him or transfer him,” he explained.

Altea grunted something that sounded like, “Maybe.”

Linos popped the lid off the can, allowing the rich scent of ground coffee to permeate the break room. “For now, though, I think we all need a proper break.”

Iacchus let out a choked noise. “Do- do you even know how illegal that stuff is?”

“Yep. It’s not at all.” Linos set the can on the table and began pulling paper towels out of the dispenser; coffee filters, while once commonplace, were now considered drug paraphernalia. “The law clearly states that coffee cannot be bought or sold, _not_ that it can’t be drank. This was obtained before the ban and is therefore perfectly legal.”

Metis was pretty sure he was lying; it smelled too fresh for that, and with how quickly Linos had gone through the stuff before the coffee ban (apparently it was a “contaminating influence from the surface”, whatever that meant) there was no possible way he had any of his old stores left. She wasn’t going to say that out loud in front of anyone, though. Even if Iacchus didn’t snitch, there was no way Linos would trust her enough to bring it out again. She didn’t want to be cut off.

Khalid woke up when someone started to shake him. More specifically, he woke up when his instinctive flailing sent him falling off of the cot he was on and onto the floor.

“Do you mind?” he snapped at the child. She backed off, hands up in mock surrender.

He scrambled to his feet and took a second to get his bearings. He was in a room with three other children of roughly his age. One of the girls looked a little younger than him. The boy looked a little older than him. Neither of them could be more than a couple of years one way or the other, though. And, he noticed, none of them were wearing manacles. Glancing down, he saw that his own manacles were also missing.

He reached up to feel his neck. No collar, either. Then his ear- yes, the tag was still there. His ear twinged with pain when his fingers brushed against it.

The children were were staring at him. He crossed his arms and stared back, painfully aware of the paleness of his skin and the unnatural green of his eyes. He didn’t dare hope they wouldn’t try to make anything of it; he was pretty sure the only reason he hadn’t been harassed during the trip here had been because it was too dark to tell he was only half Almyran.

The younger girl rolled her eyes and punched the first girl in the arm, who yelped and glared at her. “Yes, let’s all look at the half-breed.” She gestured around the room. “It’s not like we have anything else to check out. Oh, wait. We do.”

She then grabbed the boy by the arm, stumbled over a box on the floor, and began trying to open what looked like a handle-less door on the wall to Khalid’s right. Khalid shifted up to sit on the cot and watched them. After a second, the older girl joined him there.

After a few moments, the younger girl gave up and started hitting it. “Let us out!” she yelled. “I’m gonna fuck you up!”

The boy gave her a horrified look. “You’re like, nine. What are you saying stuff like that for?” he asked.

“I’m _ten,_ jackass!”

Khalid recognized her voice now- she was the one who had suggested the kidnappers were smuggling things other than children. “I think she’s a gang kid,” he said. Looking closely at her, he saw she had the characteristic scrawniness of someone who had spent far too long with far too few meals. Next to the boy, who had a stocky farmer’s build, she was _tiny._ “They grow up fast.”

“Feh! What would you know, nob-boy?”

“I’m not a nob,” Khalid said, putting on an affronted air.

“You’re close enough to one. Dunno how a half-breed gets a palace accent, but...”

Khalid hurried to come up with a good excuse. “Look, my Ma works in the palace, you pick things up there, and can you not call me that? I’m Karam.” The old lie flowed easily from his tongue.

“No nasab?” asked the boy.

He groaned. When he’d come up with this name, he’d _thought_ it would be a good one for avoiding awkward questions. That hadn’t been the case, as it turned out, but he’d already trained himself to answer to it, so... “Ibn Abihi.” That was the name used for people who didn’t know who their father was.

The younger girl nodded knowingly. “I don’t have a real nasab either. I’m Samira al Far.”

The boy frowned. “Well at least one of us does. I’m Yasin ibn Mahdi ibn-”

Samira made a farting noise with her lips. “We don’t need to know your entire family history!”

Yasin turned to the older girl. “Please tell me I’m not the only one here with a proper lineage.”

Samira made that same noise again. “You think snatchers are gonna be grabbing kids who look like they belong to someone?”

The older girl ignored her. “I’m Aliya ibnat Duha ibn Hadi,” she said. “Proper enough lineage for you?”

Yasin nodded. “It sure is. Your granda was a Habi? Would that be Abu Imad Habi al Nesani? Because my aunt’s husband...”

Khalid left them to their discussion of their respective family lineages and began exploring the room. He happened across the box that Samira (and that was _odd_ to think about- one of his father’s concubines was also named that, but the two of them might as well be complete opposites of each other) had stumbled over, and took it back to ‘his’ cot to look it over. 

It was a strange little thing, made of a thick paper that was smooth and glossy and too firm to bend. Little legs and a snout had been cut out of more paper and pasted on to give it the overall shape of a mole, for reasons unknown. Khalid wouldn’t think their captors would want to waste extra, valuable paper on stolen children, but there it was.

Yasin was the first one to notice the lid on the mole’s back, which opened up to reveal that it was full of thick, hard wafers of bread. Each one was about the size of one of Yasin’s hands or about twice the size of one of Samira’s. There were four colors- blue, dark green, pale green, and white- arranged alternating along the box. Khalid counted- there were twelve pieces in all. A rich, yeasty smell rose from the container.

His stomach reminded him that he hadn’t eaten anything since the festival. From the looks on the other children’s faces, theirs were doing the same thing.

Aliya was the first to brave the box, selecting a blue wafer and carefully nibbling at it. “Oh, that’s weird!” she exclaimed. “It tastes like mushrooms.”

That was enough to encourage Yasin to take a wafer of his own, a pale green one, but Khalid and Samira hung back. Who knew what their captors had put in their food? Khalid had already been poisoned enough times in his life, thanks.

Yasin’s apparently tasted like grass, the white one was salty and savory, and the dark green one tasted like something that Yasin couldn’t describe but that Aliya tentatively identified as seaweed.

“Ghouls are weird,” Aliya said. “Couldn’t they make bread taste like bread?”

“I don’t think it _is_ bread,” said Yasin. “It’s _heavy._ ” He handed a blue piece to Samira. “Here, try one.”

The younger girl shook her head. “Not until tomorrow.”

“Are you sure? You must be starving.”

“Look. I don’t trust food that isn’t being eaten by the person who made it. If you don’t drop dead overnight, I’ll have some.”

Aliya rolled her eyes. “Paranoid, much?”

Samira let out a nasty laugh. “You don’t last long on the streets if you eat everything handed to you.”

Khalid took a moment to explore the room while most of the others were busy eating. It was small, but not excessively so. There was one door, locked, with a large floor to ceiling window on one side. He peeked through. A hallway stretched to either side as far as he could see. Immediately across the hall was a room much like his own; he could even see a girl peering through her own window at him.

After a moment, he waved at her. After a moment, she waved back.

There were four cots arranged in his room, two to each side with just barely enough room between them for a path going from the door to a wall partitioning off an alcove in the back. Between each pair of beds was a chest: one full of toys and the other full of clothes. Along the back wall was a basin with a couple of handles on it and a long, snaking spout, and a bar of soap perched in a little dish attached to one side. The handles looked movable, so Khalid pulled one- water came out of the spout and disappeared into a tube going down from the bottom of the basin. He pushed the handle back and the water stopped.

Samira went to investigate the alcove. “I think it’s a privy!” she called after a second. 

“You _think?_ ” Yasin called back as he hurried to go look. For lack of anything better to do, Khalid and Aliya followed.

The first thing Khalid noticed were the signs. All across the back of the wall were painstakingly painted pictographs detailing exactly what the lumpy pit in the ground was to be used for. They seemed to be very insistent that the children wash their hands in the water basin after using it for its intended purpose, and even more insistent that it be used for nothing more than its intended purpose. One of the pictographs had a long list of things that were absolutely not to be put down the privy. The amount of X’s made that abundantly clear.

Khalid decided then and there that he would put _every single one of those_ down it.

Aliya took an interest in a pedal on the floor next to the pit, which had a pictograph of its own right next to it. “So if I step on this...” she said, following suit.

The blast of water that rushed across the hole in the floor was much louder than mere water had any right to be. The group stared down at it.

“Let’s make a pact _not_ to do that when anyone is sleeping,” Samira said.

Everyone readily agreed.

There was some dispute over who got which cot- both Samira and Yasin wanted the one by the water basin, and neither were willing to back down. Eventually Yasin just walked over, picked up Samira, and dropped her on the other cot in the back of the room. During the resulting screaming fight, Khalid went to go look at the toy chest.

Most of the space inside was taken up by soft rag dolls shaped like animals. One by one he pulled out a fish, a bat, three kinds of lizards (one of which had weird stalks coming out of its neck), and a bizarre caricature of a bear that had apparently been made by someone who had never seen a real one before.

“What happened to its muzzle?” Aliya asked, horrified.

“Dunno,” Khalid answered with a shrug. Maybe someone thought bears looked threatening if they had toothy parts? But why not just choose a different animal if that was the case?

He threw the bear into a corner and kept pulling things from the chest. Next up were four cups made of an oddly flexible material; he could fold them in half and they’d just pop right back to their original shape. Those would come in handy for the water basin, he supposed.

A thought brushed against his mind. “How do you think we’re supposed to bathe?” he asked.

Samira was distracted from her spat long enough to shout, “Spoiled little nob-boy gets regular baths!” before going back to failing to shove Yasin off the cot he’d claimed.

“Ignore her,” Aliya muttered. “Street rats don’t know what basic hygiene is.” A little louder, she said. “We’re not gonna be here long enough to worry about it, anyway. My parents are soldiers; they’ll come for me.”

Khalid wasn’t sure how much of that was bravado and how much was actual confidence in the ability of a couple of soldiers to track down missing children through a teleport.

In the box were also a couple of balls made of a hollow, lightweight material (Khalid immediately put one to use by bouncing it off of Yasin- it didn’t have any force to it at all) and a handful of puzzles. He recognized a couple as the type where you had to separate twisted pieces of metal, except that these were made from the same material as the balls. The last was a portrait of a spider that separated into pieces the moment Khalid went to pick it up. It hadn’t _broken,_ just fallen apart. Maybe he was meant to put it back together again? Once again, it was made of a lightweight mystery material, though this one was slightly squishy.

Khalid couldn’t help but notice that none of the toys were ones that could be turned into a weapon. Throwing them wouldn’t do anything- Yasin had barely noticed when the ball had hit him, and it was the item that was easiest to throw- and they certainly couldn’t be swung with any serious force. It made sense, he supposed- giving your enemy a weapon was generally a bad idea- but he didn’t have to like it.

The clothing chest was much more boring- it contained eight identical nightshirts. All of them were big enough to fit Yasin, which meant that Samira and Khalid would be practically swimming in them. Khalid picked one up and contemplatively twisted it into a whip. No, that wouldn’t work. A shirt whip was something used for play fights with siblings, not serious fights. It probably wouldn’t do more than annoy his captors.

Khalid crouched down to look at his cot. On initial inspection, it looked as basic as a cot got: four legs, frame, stretched canvas. A thin blanket and a single pillow apiece. Khalid felt one of the legs, trying to decide if he should try to take one off to hit a ghoul with. It was cold and metallic, which was promising. A strange toy-material one would probably be just as effective as the thrown ball.

He lifted up the front of the cot, testing its weight. It came up easily. Disappointing. He sat it back down again, sighing. Well, so much for that plan. He wondered what the legs were made of. At first he’d thought it was iron, but it would have to be hollow to be that light, and it hadn’t sounded hollow when it hit the ground. Maybe it was just a weird toy-material that was cool to the touch like metal was, because the only metal Khalid could think of that was that light was aluminum.

And that was plainly ridiculous. No one would make a cot out of something so expensive, and definitely no one would then leave that cot in the hands of children. Might as well make it out of solid gold.

“Can you rip one off?” Aliya asked, seeing what he was going for.

Khalid shook his head. “Wouldn’t do much good. Too light.” He sighed and sat down on top of the cot. It looked like their captors had thought of everything. There just wasn’t going to be a simple way of fighting them off.

The hours passed. Aliya and Yasin thew the balls around for a while before the latter grew bored and started trying to reassemble the spider picture. Samira tore apart a lizard doll (it was stuffed not with rags, as it turned out, but with a fluffy substance that looked like wool but felt nothing like it) and the mole box before crawling into her cot (which was _not_ the one she’d wanted) to fall asleep. Khalid spent some time trying to figure out the not-metal puzzles.

Then, the ambient chatter of all the other children in their rooms suddenly rose in pitch and volume. They sounded both angry and afraid, mostly the former. One distant child started yelling a stream of invective in Tammishan street cant.

Samira leapt from her cot and ran over to the window at the front of the room to peer down the hall. “Someone’s coming!” she hissed.

Khalid tensed up. Their captors had them brought nothing but pain so far, and he wasn’t just going to sit here and take it. He eyed the door. Maybe he could slip out... 

Samira seemed to have the same idea, as she went over to crouch near the bottom of the door, on the side with wall instead of window.

A woman appeared in the hallway, pushing a cart loaded with crates. She was as pale as death, with stark white hair kept up in a strange transparent hat and solid black eyes like some sort of demon. She took a forked pole from the cart, opened the door of the room across from theirs, and went inside.

“I told you they’re ghouls!” Khalid heard Aliya hiss as he watched the woman use the stick to herd their neighbors into their privy. “They brought us here to drink our blood, I’m calling it!”

Samira scoffed. “There’s no such thing. I bet they’re just a weird kind of laguz.”

“What kind of a laguz looks like _that? _”__

____

____

The woman busied herself in the room across the hall. From what Khalid could see through the window, she was cleaning the room and picking up scattered toys. Was she a maid? Some kind of weird ghoul maid? A normal maid wouldn’t brandish sticks at her charges, though. 

It took the ghoul a while to finish cleaning; she had what looked like a sponge on a stick and was using it to scrub the walls and ceiling, and then when that was done she took a bunch of rags on a stick to scrub the floor, and each stage was _thorough._

“This is boring,” Aliya said, but kept watching anyway. 

They all tensed up when the ghoul left the room, closed the door, and started across the hall to their group’s room. 

The moment their door opened, Samira tried to duck through it. The ghoul reacted quickly by using the pole to force the girl to the ground, its tines catching her below her armpits. Samira spat at her captor and tried to wriggle free, but Khalid didn’t see whether she succeeded because he was already through the door and running down the hallway past rooms full of children. 

Once again he felt the tag in his ear pulse with magic, and once again the energy drained from his body until he fell unconscious. 

__

__“And what even was that stick?” Yasin was asking when Khalid woke up again._ _

__“A man catcher,” Samira answered. “A weird one that doesn’t lock.” She frowned at the befuddled look on the boy’s face. “You’ve never had a run-in with the city guard, have you?”_ _

__“Well, no! Most people don’t.”_ _

__“I have,” Khalid said as he tried to orient himself. He was in the cot on the wall side of the door again, he guessed because it was slightly closer to the door than the one on the window side. The chests were closed and the mole box gone- in its place was another box, this one with bits of paper cut to make it look like a mouse. It had been opened, and Yasin and Aliya were both munching away on a piece of not-bread. Their toys, which had been scattered around the room, were also mostly gone. The only one left untouched was the spider picture._ _

__Aliya was frowning at Yasin. “You really never saw one of those being used?”_ _

__“Why would I? I’m no crook.”_ _

__“That matters less than you seem to think,” Aliya said._ _

__Khalid laid back and stared up at the ceiling and the strange lights dotting it. They almost looked like mage-lights, like what Morfis used, but those needed someone constantly maintaining them. Lanterns were much cheaper, but he couldn’t see any flicker in these that would indicate that. Maybe they were like the teleport panel?_ _

__“I mean, I get that your little village probably didn’t have much in the way of guards,” Aliya continued. “But surely you saw them when your Ba was taking crops to the city?”_ _

__“My Ma, thanks. And I saw guards; I didn’t see weird sticks.”_ _

__The lights went out._ _

__Khalid heard Samira squawk in surprise and knock something over. Aliya and Yasin likewise expressed complaints about the sudden darkness. For his own part, Khalid was very glad he hadn’t gotten off of his cot yet._ _

__“That’s _my_ cot!” Yasin protested at probably Samira._ _

__“Mine now, bitch!” Yep, definitely Samira._ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soyal - Soy flour fortified with spirulina and other forms of algae. The staple food of Shambhala, it’s used in almost everything in some form or other.
> 
> Agarthans with soy allergies don’t tend to last long.


	3. Quarantine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Claude has an unpleasant conversation and a more unpleasant encounter.

It turned out that the pieces of not-bread tasted pretty good when one had gone more than a day without eating anything, even if the flavors were a little odd. The morning’s box, shaped like a rabbit, contained sweeter ones than the one from the day before (or at least, according to Aliya and Yasin), with the wafers in more pastel colors. They tasted something like fruit, or at least they tasted like what someone might imagine fruit tasted like if they’d only heard it described. The pink one Khalid was eating was reminiscent of cherry, kind of. He wondered if they’d ever get _real_ fruit.

“They don’t leave us leftovers, did you notice?” Yasin mentioned as he snagged a lavender wafer from the box. “Everything’s always new.”

Aliya considered this information for a few moments. “Maybe they don’t want to attract bugs,” she suggested.

“Or they don’t want us to save up, so they can threaten to cut us off if we disobey them,” said Samira. Her own share of the box had disappeared almost as soon as they’d opened it, the girl having apparently decided the threat of poisoning was over.

“Or they want to control what we eat so they can drug us later,” suggested Khalid.

“You two are too paranoid,” Yasin chided. “If they want to hurt us, they’ll hurt us. Why would they be sneaky about it?”

“Yeah, I was wondering about that,” Aliya said. “I’d expect that kind of behavior from a street rat.” She pointed at Samira, who pointed back with a thumb and nothing else. Aliya wasn’t quite able to stop the disgust from showing on her face- it was a very rude gesture, after all. “But you’re a servant. Is it really so hard working in the palace?”

Everything would be fine as long as Khalid stuck to the lies he was already used to and didn’t use too many details. They were _meant_ for people he’d only meet occasionally, and not ones he’d be stuck in close quarters with for the foreseeable future, but they were still good lies and he could sell them well enough. Probably.

“Look at me,” he said, gesturing at his face, and more specifically his vivid green eyes. Poison eyes, the palace servants called them when they thought he couldn’t hear. A bolder one had once said it to his face “Do you think I’m _liked_ there? Only people who like me are my Ma and her husband.”

“And your Ba?”

Khalid snorted. “As far as I’m concerned her husband _is_ my Ba. My _father,_ though, I can’t tell you much about. I’m an ibn Abihi, remember?”

“Surprised they let your mother work in the palace at all,” said Aliya, nodding. “Unless you came around after that?”

If Khalid wasn’t stuck in a tiny room with the other children, he could just walk away from these questions. He momentarily wished the ghouls would come around again, so he could run off and get knocked out again like he had when their food came. “No, before. She...” He sighed. “My Ma’s from the borderlands.”

“Ohhh,” said both Aliya and Samira at the same time. Aliya’s eyes were wide; Samira had an _‘I knew it!’_ expression on her face.

Yasin gave them a confused look. “‘Ohh’ what?”

Aliya cleared her throat. “There’s a lot of half-breeds in the borderlands.”

“There are,” agreed Khalid. “And Ma had a good reason for leaving there. My understanding is she basically ran away in the middle of the night.” That sentence, as far as Khalid knew, was perfectly true. It was just that she ran from the other side of the border, and that the reason wasn’t the one he was feeling guilty for implying.

Aliya nodded. “My parents said I’m not allowed to ever go to the borderlands. It’s just too dangerous.”

Samira rolled her eyes. “Can’t be any more dangerous than home.”

“No, really. You see, Fodlani raiders-”

“I know all about raiders,” Samira interrupted. “We call ‘em “city guard.””

Aliya snapped back, “That’s not the same at-”

Yasin put a hand on Aliya’s shoulder, though it didn’t last long before she shrugged it off. “Let’s not argue,” he said. “We’re stuck together, remember? We should at least pretend to get along.”

Aliya grumbled and stomped off into the privy.

“Practically an egg,” Samira said under her breath.

“What’s that mean?” asked Khalid. He assumed it was some form of street slang, and all he knew about that was that it had been made to be incomprehensible to people who didn’t know it.

“It means “back off, nob-boy.””

Khalid backed off.

There was a sound like rain from the privy, which was not a sound that should ever be associated with such a place. It stopped just as suddenly as it started, and then after a minute Aliya poked her head out from around the alcove. “I found out how we’re supposed to take a bath!” she called out, delighted. “Come look!”

The other three turned to each other, shrugged, and went to go see. It wasn’t like they had anything better to do.

Once they were finished crowding into the tiny privy, Aliya pressed a panel on the wall. A door came out of the wall and shut behind them, trapping them in. At the same time, a panel sprung out of the floor to cover the pit where they did their business.

“See, this keeps the bath water from escaping...” Aliya explained. “And _this_ one turns on the water!”

Hot, soapy rain sprayed down on all of them from a tiny device in the ceiling, drawing out a series of startled cries and curses (the latter entirely from Samira) from the trapped children. The water, fortunately, didn’t flood the room, instead draining out through tiny vents in the back wall. Unfortunately, it lasted for an entire minute, after which they were all thoroughly soaked.

“Did you _have_ to-” Samira started to complain before a second spray started. This one was with regular, non-soapy water, but it was still just as annoying as the first spray.

After another long minute of hot rainfall, the water finally stopped for good. But that wasn’t the end of the ordeal. Hot, dry air poured into the room from vents in the walls with enough force to shake off any water directly in the path of one of the vents. It lasted for (what else?) yet another minute, after which they were all only slightly wet instead of sopping. If they hadn’t been bathing with their clothes on, it seemed likely that they may even have ended up _dry._

Finally, the door opened; Yasin and Samira both tried to shove their way through at the same time, only succeeding in knocking each other around. Khalid and Aliya followed at a more leisurely pace.

Yasin ran for the clothing box, grabbed a fresh nightshirt, and ran back into the privy.

“Aliya,” said Samira as she plopped down onto Yasin’s cot. “I just want you to know that I hate you with every fiber of my being.”

Aliya looked entirely unapologetic. “At least we’ll be clean while we’re here.”

Blood samples.

Altea wanted fresh blood samples.

Because apparently the ones their contact with the exiles had taken were suspect. Metis personally didn’t agree, but she wasn’t going to question it out loud; it wouldn’t do any good, and besides, it wasn’t her place. Her job was to do husbandry. Feed, clean, done. _Linos_ was the poor sap who had to actually get the samples, and he hadn’t bothered trying to argue about it.

It was a relief how easy the first couple of rooms were. They weren’t supposed to use sedative spells except in emergencies, and Metis had been concerned about handling surfacers without them- they _were_ wild animals, after all. Worse, they were wild animals still under quarantine. Who knew what horrible diseases they’d picked up on the surface?

Fortunately, riot poles apparently worked just as well on surfacers as they did on humans. It was easy enough for her and Iacchus to pin one down while Linos took the sample. He was well-practiced at it, having had plenty of experience in Altea’s dog experiments before she was approved for surfacer studies.

“Doesn’t this stress them out?” Iacchus asked as a surfacer girl screamed something in her barbarian tongue and spat at them.

Linos jabbed the girl in the ear with a lancet, easily following as she tried to shake her head away. The droplet of blood that welled up was then collected into a capillary tube. “That’s Number Twelve,” he said, sticking the tube into its well in the tray Metis was holding out. He stood up. “Yes, it does. But it’s less stressful than sedation and it needs to be done. We don’t want any surprise contamination. Ok, we’re done here.”

Metis removed her riot pole from the girl’s chest, gesturing at Iacchus to move his too. The surfacer immediately bolted into the bathroom to hide, though not without spitting at them again. “Imagine if we were already halfway through the experiment and found we had _more_ dragon-blooded subjects,” she explained. “All our data would have to be thrown out.”

The trio turned to leave the room, Iacchus watching their rear in case the surfacers decided to try for some revenge. “So why can’t we sedate them for it?” the man asked.

“The usual. Side effects. Risks,” said Linos as he led the way across the hall to Room Four. “Not very big ones, but still ones to avoid. I only count three here.”

Metis blinked at the sudden subject change, then looked through the window into the suite. Sure enough, one of the children was missing. Number Sixteen, from the looks of it. “Maybe he’s just in the bathroom,” she suggested.

“Hopefully it didn’t get out,” said Iacchus. “Didn’t you have to chase it down the hall yesterday?”

Metis groaned. Being the first one to accidentally let a surfacer out was not the distinction she’d wanted to make for herself in this lab. “Yes, I did. Today as well. And yes, I had to sedate him to get him back. They’re surprisingly fast, for kids.”

“Don’t let Altea hear you call them kids,” Linos warned, opening the door. He then immediately moved to block one of them, Number -Metis glanced at her ID tag- Fifteen, from darting into the hall. Iacchus pushed her back with the riot pole so the trio could get inside the room.

A boy charged them, yelling. Metis flicked her pole down and forward, pushing him to the floor and pinning him. “There’s nothing wrong with calling them that,” she argued. “My sister calls her olm ‘the kid-’ I can certainly call a surfacer one.”

“Altea is very specific about language,” Linos said, crouching down to take the sample. “‘Kid’ implies human children, not surfacer ones. Thirteen.”

Iacchus fended off a flailing and not especially effective attack by the other girl in the room, who by process of elimination had to be Number Fourteen. Fifteen glared at them from the corner by the sink, muttering something incomprehensible but probably insulting.

After the other two were sampled and herded into the bathroom for safekeeping, Metis set about looking for their missing member. He couldn’t have gotten out, she reasoned. They’d done everything they’d could to turn patient observation rooms into inescapable cells. The doors couldn’t be broken or forced, not by children. There were no windows; only the wealthiest wards in Shambhala had anything resembling an “out” to look out into, and a hospital in either of them wouldn’t be in such dire straits as to need to lease half their space to medical labs. The drop ceiling tiles had even been glued down in case someone somehow got up there.

On a hunch, Metis opened the toy box. Nothing notable except for pieces of soyal crackers and the tattered remains of what had once been a perfectly good stuffed animal. As Iacchus prodded the ceiling tiles with his riot pole in case they’d come loose and provided an exit, she walked over to the laundry basket and looked inside.

The clothes in it were wet, which was odd but could probably be dismissed as a weird surfacer thing. Most importantly, they were lumpy. Suspiciously lumpy.

Metis poked the largest lump with the prong end of her riot pole. It twitched. “Found him!” she called to the others before starting to try to dig him out.

Number Sixteen stubbornly refused to be dug out. As far as she could tell, he had wrapped the laundry around himself like a cocoon. Pulling the layers away with the riot pole was impossible, and she outright refused to stick her hand in there without knowing where the dangerous end was.

Iacchus was the one to come up with the solution- he simply upended the basket onto the floor and started pulling away at the loose pieces of clothing. Metis moved in, ready to restrain him with the riot pole. “Can you tell where his waist is?” she asked.

The man shook his head. “I think it’s curled up,” he said, trying and failing to yank a nightshirt away from the bundle.

Metis took a step closer to get a better look.

Number Sixteen uncurled in a flash, flinging away his cocoon of clothes and launching himself at her. She jabbed the riot pole down, but wasn’t quite able to trap him in time.

Teeth closed on the front of her ankle. Bit down. Broke skin.

“Fuck!” she yelled, staggering back. The surfacer followed, refusing to let go of her. Those horrible teeth started grinding together, trying to tear the wound larger. “Get him off of me!” she snapped at Iacchus as she tried to push the child back with the riot pole.

Iacchus had frozen up and was just staring in horror at what was happening. New kids!

After a second, Linos broke protocol and just grabbed Number Sixteen by the shoulders and yanked him up. A scrap of skin came off in his mouth and was promptly spat at her. “Iacchus, pass me a lancet,” Linos said over the boy’s screeching. “Metis, go take care of that.”

Metis took the invitation at face value and hurried out of the room. She had to clean this. Who knew what horrible diseases that surfacer was carrying? The _least_ she could expect was a staph infection. The worst... well, the initial blood testing had ruled out both rabies and tetanus, fortunately, but those weren’t the only deadly viruses up on the surface, and if Altea was right about not being able to trust the exile samples...

She limped her way down the hall, painfully aware of the blood soaking shoe and shoe cover alike. She had to focus on what she could do instead of what could happen. Clean the wound. Get new shoes. Endure the inevitable safety committee. Try not to think about what would happen to her if the surfacer had plague or worse in his saliva. _Clean the wound._

She didn’t think being bitten was a firing offense, not if she could come up with a half-decent excuse for it. She was just glad she hadn’t reflexively kicked him- hurting a subject was _definitely_ a firing offense.

There. First aid kit next to the bathroom. Gauze. Antiseptic soap. She had to clean the wound.

The bathroom was closer than the first aid station and would do just as well (better, even- Tychon had _terrible_ bedside manner), so she ducked into it and climbed up onto the counter to stick her ankle in the sink. She had to encourage the blood to flow, to wash away any saliva or bacteria that could have gotten in there. Soak the gauze with soap in the meantime. Clean the wound, don’t get an infection. She didn’t know what she’d do if she got hepatitis.

The door opened. “Hey, what the fuck?” asked a voice.

Metis didn’t even look up. “Eris,” she said in greeting. “Just so you know, if there’s a mandatory health and safety meeting later it’s not my fault.”

Eris gave her a disbelieving look as she pushed her way past and ducked into a stall.

Metis took a handful of gauze squares, gritted her teeth, and started scrubbing her ankle, which immediately began filing angry complaints with her. She wasn’t sure if the pain was from the soap or just from irritating the wound, but it sorely made her wish they’d sprung for the soap with analgesics. But nope, they didn’t have the budget for that. 

The SOPs said she had to do this for _fifteen minutes._ She understood why and she wasn’t going to risk life and limb by cutting it short, but that didn’t mean she had to like it.

“Ow,” she started muttering after a while. “Ow, ow, ow, ow...”

“Ow,” Aliya was muttering. “Ow, ow, ow, ow-”

“Shut up!” Samira snapped at her.

“What’s with them and poking ears?” Yasin complained.

Khalid shrugged. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer, anyway. This wasn’t going to be a routine thing, was it? Not that he could do much to stop it if he was. ‘Hide in the clothing chest and be taken away with the garbage’ hadn’t been the most brilliant plan in the world, but it had been the best he could do with such limited time.

Sure, he’d managed to get one of them, but not very well and still only one. At least if they _had_ blood, it meant they couldn’t really be ghouls; demons didn’t bleed. He still wouldn’t put it past them to drink blood and eat corpses, but if they did they’d just be crooks playing at being a ghoul.

Maybe Samira was on to something.

“What kind of laguz do you all know?” he asked, interrupting some angry muttering from Aliya.

“Wolves and birds,” said Yasin. “And Manaketes, of course.”

“Cats,” said Aliya. “Taguel. Dogs.”

“There’s no such thing as dog laguz,” said Yasin.

“Yes there is- my Ma’s commander’s Dog tribe!”

“I’ve seen a few, too,” Samira chimed in. “They’re like, wolf laguz that live in the city. Most wolves can’t stand it.”

Nothing unusual there. Khalid himself could add one more, but fox laguz were only seen in Hoshidan retinues. “Any all-white animals?” he asked.

Yasin shrugged. “I guess there could be white Taguel?”

“The one that got me had orange hair,” said Aliya. “Are there orange and white animals?”

Khalid snapped his fingers. “Stoats!” he exclaimed. He frowned at the confused look on Samira’s face. “They’re a kind of Srengi ferret,” he explained. “But they’re orange-brown in summer and white in winter. And ferret ears don’t look too different from human ones- cover them with hair and that weird hat and you wouldn’t notice.”

“And ferrets live underground,” said Yasin. “Those tunnels we came through...”

“What about their tails?” asked Aliya, crossing her arms. “I didn’t see one on any of the ghouls.”

“I guess they could be tucking their tails into their trousers?” suggested Yasin. “I know I’d do that if I was going into enclosed rooms with angry kids.”

“We would have seen a lump in their clothes,” Aliya countered. “So unless you’re trying to convince me they chopped their tails off, they can’t be laguz.”

“They can’t be ghouls, though,” said Samira. “Ghouls don’t exist.”

“Of course they exist!” said Aliya. “How d’you explain graveyards getting dug up and the bodies gone?”

“Graverobbers and wild dogs, duh.”

“Unearthly screams in the night?”

“It’s Tammisha. When _aren’t_ there screams in the night?”

Yasin gave her a disturbed look. “Screaming at night isn’t normal.”

Khalid tried, but wasn’t quite able to ignore the resulting discussion about what was and wasn’t normal for a city, and whether any of it should be considered the result of ghouls or not. Samira was certain that ghouls were just a myth, spoken of so people could pretend the worst parts of humanity were not in fact part of humanity. Aliya was equally certain that ghouls were as real as jinn. Yasin was mostly just invested in making sure the arguing stayed civil and no one called anyone bad names over it, _Samira._

It did get Khalid thinking, though. There were wolf laguz in Tammisha. Not many, but enough, and his parents would use every resource at their disposal to track him down and bring him home. Sure, for the first day they’d probably assumed he’d just snuck out to the city to enjoy the festival, but he had already been gone for far longer than ever before -and that included the time someone had actually tried to hold him for ransom.

A scent trail would lead them to the teleporter pad. Would they be able to figure out how it worked? If so, then it probably wasn’t going to be long now before they were all rescued. Maybe. He hoped.

He wanted his mom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

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End file.
